(L-R) Local sec Dr Rajpal Hande, ISC general president Sarjerao Nimse and MU VC Dr Rajan M Welukar interacting with the press about the 102nd Indian Science Congress

One of the speakers on age-old aeroplanes claims the aircraft could fly backwards, travel to other planets.

Straddling a lecture on ribosomes, resistance to antibiotics and the origin of life and a discourse about controlling the cell cycle, both delivered by Nobel laureates, is a talk that's at odds with the programming at the five-day Indian Science Congress, scheduled to begin at Mumbai University's Kalina Campus on January 3.

The lecture in question, included in a symposium that examines the role of "ancient sciences through Sanskrit", which will take place on January 4, is in keeping with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government's untested claims that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle takes root in the Vedas and India conducted the world's first nuclear test "lakhs of years ago".

It is arguably inconsistent with the tradition of scientific method, testable methods and primacy of empirical evidence on which the 102-year-old congress was founded.

The talk that is symbolic of this anomaly deals with "ancient Indian aviation technology", which will be delivered by a retired principal of a pilot training facility in Kerala and a lecturer at the Swami Vivekananda International School and Junior College in Mumbai.

The first of the two speakers, Captain Anand J Bodas, told Mumbai Mirror that he believes "modern science is unscientific" in that it claims things it cannot understand do not exist. "The Vedic or rather ancient Indian definition of an aeroplane was a vehicle which travels through the air from one country to another country, from one continent to another continent, from one planet to another planet," he said. "In those days aeroplanes were huge in size, and could move left, right, as well as backwards, unlike modern planes which only fly forward."

Captain Bodas's source text for these claims is what he terms is an ancient Indian treatise on aviation, Vaimanika Prakaranam, the authorship of which is attributed to the sage Bhardwaj. "Out of the 500 guidelines described in it, only 100 to 120 survive today," he said of the manuscript. "This is due to the passage of time, foreign rulers ruling us, and things being stolen from the country."

Prof Gauri Mahulikar, head of MU's Sanskrit Department and coordinator for the session, said that this was the first time that the Indian Science Congress had held a symposium on ancient Indian science viewed through Sanskrit literature. "If we had chosen Sanskrit professors to talk about the references to aviation technology in Sanskrit literature, which includes information on how to make planes, the dress code and diet of pilots, the seven types of fuel used, people would have dismissed us, but Captain Bodas is himself a pilot, and his co-presenter, Ameya Jadhav, holds an MTech degree besides an MA in Sanskrit," she said.

Union environment minister Prakash Jawadekar will deliver the inaugural address at the session, which will also dwell on engineering applications of ancient Indian botany, advances in surgery in ancient India and the neuroscience of yoga.

Mumbai University, which will host the event after a gap of 54 years, has included in its roster of speakers six Nobel laureates and four recipients of equally prestigious scientific prizes like the Fields Medal.

The scepticism that animates the work of such scientists was in evidence when Mumbai Mirror asked one of the country's foremost experts on aviation, former Director of National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) and recipient of the Padma Vibhushan, Prof Roddam Narasimha, to discuss Captain Bodas's source text. "There is no credible account of aviation in ancient India," he said. "[And] there is no authentic account of achievement in the field of aviation in ancient India. The book Vaimanika Prakaranam or Vimanika Shastra has been studied in great detail and the accepted view in the scientific community is that the descriptions given in it are not scientifically correct."

According to a study by five professors - H S Mukunda, S M Deshpande, H RNagendra, A Prabhu, and S P Govindaraju - of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, published in the journal Scientific Opinion, the Vimanika Shastra was not an ancient text as claimed by its votaries, but "cannot be dated earlier than 1904" and that the planes described in it are "poor concoctions" and "unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying".

The decision to include the lecture in the schedule does have its supporters; Dr S D Sharma, Prof of Aerospace Engineering at IIT-B, being one among them. "I would not dismiss the topic out of hand," he said. "A purely mythological lecture comparing aeroplanes in Sanskrit texts to contemporary ones could be very interesting. However, there should not be any kind of story telling that is not backed by evidence."

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